Filling in on Rush Limbaughs Monday radio show, National Review columnist Mark Steyn said that Republicans lost big on Election Day because less engaged and more uniformed voters turned out in force.

We do very well in off years, in the midterms  1994, 2002, Steyn said. Republicans can have good years then because essentially theyre low-turnout elections  people who are engaged in politics vote. In the presidential years, people voted  a broader pool of voters comes in, and theyre basically people who swim in the broader culture. Theyre not people who know the name of their congressmen or governor, and [they] arent terribly interested.

Steyn, author After America: Get Ready for Armageddon, added that the GOP has had persistent problems getting motivated voters to the polls.

Romney did better than McCain, but anyone with a pulse could have done that. Until Republicans get a better understanding of popular culture and learn how to communicate their beliefs in a modern fashion, they will lose to the democrats who have mastered the emotional manipulation of the masses.

Steyn is correct! The choice should have been well-defined as being between individual freedom (liberty) and slavery to government (tyranny).

Instead, Candidate Romney made it about mere symptoms of tyrannical government: the economy and lack of jobs.

When people are free and government is bound, the economy and jobs naturally occur, because they arise out of the optimism, freedom and creativity of free people pursuing their own happiness.

On the other hand, when government officials ignore "the chains of the Constitution" (Jefferson's term), assuuming unconstitutional and coercive power to impose restraints on the liberties of "the People," economic freedom, opportunity, prosperity and plenty fall by the wayside.

The 2012 election is history, but the long term consequences of loss of freedom will punish rising generations for years to come!

I think Steyn (and you) are right. Another way to put it: Romney ran a “talking points” campaign without much depth and explanation. If Lincoln could make serious arguments to untutored farmers, I don’t see why contemporary candidates can’t to our more- (if ill-) schooled voters. Thomas Sowell has also argued for more substance in campaigns.

...the GOP has had persistent problems getting motivated voters to the polls...I guess that's my problem in understanding what happened on November 6 - I kept hearing that Republicans were way ahead in the "enthusiasm' metric, were more motivated to get out and vote against Obama and all he stood for - somehow I thought "motivated" people would be able to get themselves out to vote, not have to be cajoled or bribed or persuaded or whatever it's supposed to take to get them to the polls - my mistake.....

On the other hand, Obama didn’t run on any agenda except FORWARD. Not even a plan for a 2nd term. I guess he didn’t need it - instead, he just bashed Romney and made what he thought were cute remarks about Big Bird, Romnesia, etc.

Yet, people expected Romney to go into details about his plan. If he had done that - then the media would have torn him to shreds. Heck, they did anyway. And, not knowing who he would have as cabinet members or elected Senators, etc., it would be difficult to lay out specifics.

Your point is well taken. We might remember that the 85 essays of Madison, Hamilton and Jay, known as THE FEDERALIST, were written for consumption by farmers and ordinary citizens as explanations of the Constitution and its protections for their rights and liberties.

We must take into account, however, the depth of understanding possessed by the authors of those essays, as well as their passion and commitment to the ideas of liberty. Where are we to find candidates of such perception and devotion to liberty today?

Well, now that you’ve made yourself feel important and elnightened by promoting a third party (yeah, that will work, since there are only about 75 parties now. I’m sure YOUR new one WILL be the one that works).....you should know that many of the good guys are elected in off years....

Well, now that you’ve made yourself feel important and elnightened by promoting a third party (yeah, that will work, since there are only about 75 parties now. I’m sure YOUR new one WILL be the one that works).....you should know that many of the good guys are elected in off years....

I think you can be substantive without exposing yourself too much to demagoguery. Obama gutted welfare reform, one of the most successful social policies of recent times, and it go-put!t little attention in the campaign. The changes were hard to explain, but it could have been done. There were dozens of similar errors by his administration that could have been explained as taking us toward dependency instead of toward an opportunity society.

On Rush's show today Steyn said conservatives had flushed a billion dollars down the toilet on the 2012 election. He said we would have done better to spend that money on five $200 million blockbuster films that framed things according to the conservative worldview, to teach the public.

I saw Spielberg's Lincoln film this weekend and all I can say is that Steyn is right. We're simply being out-hustled by the left in terms of cultural influence. That movie is a brilliantly executed piece of liberal propaganda and we have no answer to it.

You are largely correct, although I think Steyn’s argument was a lack of big ideas...not specifics. He is saying he ran on a narrow idea that he could better steer the economy. He made no larger argument about the size of government, the massive growth of DC vs the rest of the country or liberty vs. government dictate.

At the same time, you have a solid point. Romney was hammered for not having specifics, but the guy in office never made any presentation of a plan for what four more years brings. We know he’d pay for 5 extra days of government a year with tax increases, but never mentioned how he was going to pay for the other 360.25 days of the year for his big government controls. A vague ‘Forward’ was all the voters needed to hear, apparently. It is frustrating to no end...we have to learn how to manipulate the media bias and every time a person goes on these shows use the time to hit on our points. We play defensive and explain our side. The other side just hammers us. With the press bias, they win because they never get any scrutiny that is seen by the average voter.

22
posted on 11/26/2012 5:04:46 PM PST
by ilgipper
(Obama supporters are comprised of the uninformed & the ill-informed)

Absolutely. The liberals are eating our lunch in terms of media influence. I don't know why we're ceding that ground to them. Back in the day -- and I mean way back in the day...like back in the days of the Catholic church and Michelangelo and Leonardo, conservatives owned the media lock stock and barrel. Even into the fifties and sixties of the last century we held our ground. But now we're just totally getting trounced. It really is an embarrassment.

The problem is, you don’t get it. The problem is not any party, the problem is human nature. And which ever of your brilliant third parties emerges, they will have that same problem. You know why? Because they’ll be run by humans, and those humans will be subject to human nature. Duh.

Does anybody here doubt for a New York minute...that had Mitt Romney won the election with hundreds of precincts 100+ voting for him it would NOT be in the MSM 24/7 and in front of a judge somewhere from now until 2016?

the Pubbies are no where to be found...just crickets...

IMHO...they took the campaign donations and ran....to sit down with the rest of DC and raise our taxes...and continue to authorize stupid, corrupt spending....and continue to prosecute the war on Flyover Country by DC.

27
posted on 11/26/2012 6:06:48 PM PST
by mo
(If you understand, no explanation is needed. If you don't understand, no explanation is possible.)

I'm afraid so. If he had tried to argue a strong conservative case, he would have been seen as a liar, since his record as governor was in no way conservative.

Pro life? How could he argue that when he pushed through taxpayer funded abortion as "healthcare" in Massachusetts?

Pro family? How could he argue that, when he was a pioneer of gay marriage?

Anti-government healthcare? How could he argue that, when Romneycare gave Obama his chief model to work from?

How can a man with no apparent principles argue from principle? It just won't work.

He came across as a small, shriveled candidate because, regretably, that's what he was. Not his looks, which are fine. But the complete absence of any basic principles. He was not in a position to say very much, or to attack Obama on stuff like his votes to throw born-alive babies out on the roof to die, because it would have rebounded back on him if he tried.

Well, one of the reasons that we have no answer to it is because in general the anti-Left is either oblivious to, ignorant of, or hostile and dismissive of culture. Kind of like my attitude toward, say, ice hockey - except that if knowing about and promulgating ice hockey was the way to win the war, I would get a pair of skates, get season tickets and get with the program. How many members of FR read the only non-Leftist cultural publication, The New Criterion? Anybody? How many stay informed by reading TLS - does anyone know what it is? How many are members of a museum? How many go to the ballet or opera even once a year? How many ever go to a jazz concert? How many go to thr theater? These are all components in the cultural landscape, and are something that can’t be bought with money. Any more than a winning sports team van be created with money and nothing else.
One has to participate, one has to be engaged. The anti-Left has been largely absent from the cultural discourse in America for almost a hundred years. So of course we have no answer to Spielberg et al. You can’t fight on the epic level of War and Peace if you’re armed with the Reader’s Digest.

Well, one of the reasons that we have no answer to it is because in general the anti-Left is either oblivious to, ignorant of, or hostile and dismissive of culture. Kind of like my attitude toward, say, ice hockey - except that if knowing about and promulgating ice hockey was the way to win the war, I would get a pair of skates, get season tickets and get with the program. How many members of FR read the only non-Leftist cultural publication, The New Criterion? Anybody? How many stay informed by reading TLS - does anyone know what it is? How many are members of a museum? How many go to the ballet or opera even once a year? How many ever go to a jazz concert? How many go to thr theater? These are all components in the cultural landscape, and are something that can’t be bought with money. Any more than a winning sports team van be created with money and nothing else.
One has to participate, one has to be engaged. The anti-Left has been largely absent from the cultural discourse in America for almost a hundred years. So of course we have no answer to Spielberg et al. You can’t fight on the epic level of War and Peace if you’re armed with the Reader’s Digest.

The Republicans have shown themselves to be worthless all on their own. They cannot win the equivalent of a 3-inch put against a guy who clearly hates America, her Consitution, the Bill of Rights, private property, and the free enterprise system.

We needed another Reagan, and Rove gives us George H. ‘kinder, gentler’ Bush; we need an answer to Clinton, and we get George ‘slam is a religion of peace’ Bush; nobody knows jack about this community organizer obama, and we get John ‘keating five’ McCain who still loses; obama drives us right into the abyss, and the party bosses ram Romney down our throat as ‘the only one who can win’. You know the end of that story.

Sorry, but we've given the GOP more than enough time to do the right thing. The Republicans are not equipped to do the heavy lifting necessary to lead us to true recovery (culturally and economically). Even now, after all this, their answer is to become more like the Democrats.

33
posted on 11/26/2012 7:29:56 PM PST
by MichaelCorleone
('We the People' can and will take this country back...starting today.)

I like Mark but disagree. Romeny failed to provide details at a level the people could relate to. On jobs, for example, he promised "a plan to create twelve million jobs!" To paraphrase Stalin, "One job is an accomplishment, twelve million is a statistic." Why did he never say, "I'll approve the Keystone Pipeline on Inauguration day, instantly creating 20,000 highpaying jobs for oilworkers, pipefitters and steelworkers, jobs held hostage by the corrupt Obama regime?"

Guarantee that would have made more impact than "I've got twelve million jobs up my sleeve."

I actually did hear him say that he would approve the Keystone pipeline the day he was inaugurated. He also mentioned the jobs it would bring. Its just that his message was snuffed out by the negatives.

you don’t get it. You don’t get it at all. I’m not defending the GOP at all. I have no argument with the problems you state within the GOP. That’s all true.

Those problems do exist. But those are human mistakes. And you won’t find a third party full of robots. You just don’t have a clue as to what I’m talking about. It’s a people problem, not a party problem.

I told everybody that would listen that Romney would lose because he allowed Dinglebarry to school yard bully him and he would not fight back. Mitt was the best man for the job but folks want a fighter and the Muslim Prez is a dirty lying Chicago machine politican that shucks and jives his way through life with affirmative action and set asides.

40
posted on 11/27/2012 3:48:23 AM PST
by BTCM
(Death and destruction is the only treaty Muslims comprehend.)

Your other post re a "War and Peace" vs. a "Reader's Digest" level of understanding provides an apt description of one result of decades of deliberate effort and censorship of the ideas essential to liberty from the nation's textbooks and public square.

Such was not always so.

The following excerpt from a 1987 essay entitled "Will the Great American Experiment Succeed?", from the 292-page Bicentennial volume, "Our Ageless Constitution" includes Tocqueville's observations on the level of understanding which existed at that time among ordinary citizens in the wilderness of America. The entire essay, co-authored by Dr. Russell Kirk and the volume's Editor, may be dowloaded here.

"Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people...said John Adams. And Thomas Jefferson declared: "Whenever the people are well-informed they can be trusted with their own government...The boys of the rising generation are to be the men of the next, and the sole guardians of the principles we deliver over to them."

Early generations of Americans were taught the principles upon which their nation had developed its Con­stitution. The Founders believed that the real security for liberty would be a people who could understand those ideas which are necessary to preserve liberty and who could perceive approaching threats to their freedom. For that reason, a primary purpose of the schools was to teach boys and girls to read and write so that they could study the ideas of freedom. A popular textbook for children was entitled "Catechism on the Constitution." Written by Arthur J. Stansbury and published in 1828, it contained questions and answers on the principles of the American political system.

Tocqueville's Democracy In America , written in the 1830's, described America's aggressive process of univer­sal education on the Constitution and the political process:

"It cannot be doubted that in the United States the instruction of the people powerfully contributes to the support of the democratic republic; and such must always be the case, I believe, where the in ­ struction which enlightens the understanding is not separated from the moral education ...." The American citizen, he said, "..will inform you what his rights are and by what means he exercises them .. In the United States, politics are the end and aim of education ... every citizen receives the elementary notions of human knowledge; he is taught, moreover, the doctrines and the evidences of his religion, the history of his country, and the leading features of its Constitution .... it is extremely rare to find a man imperfectly acquainted with all these things, and a person wholly ignorant of them is a sort of phenomenon .... It is difficult to imagine the incredible rapidity with which thought cir ­ culates in the midst of these deserts [wilderness]. I do not think that so much intellectual activity exists in the most enlightened and populous districts of France."

"Freedom is the most valuable of all human possessions, next after life itself. It is more valuable, in a manner, than even health. No human agency can secure health; but good laws, justly administered, can and do secure freedom. Freedom, indeed, is almost the only thing that law can secure. Law cannot secure equality, nor can it secure prosperity. In the direction of equality, all that law can do is to secure fair play, which is equality of rights but is not equality of conditions. In the direction of prosperity, all that law can do is to keep the road open. That is the Quintessence of Individualism, and it may fairly challenge comparison with that Quintessence of Socialism we have been discussing. Socialism, disguise it how we may, is the negation of Freedom. That it is so, and that it is also a scheme not capable of producing even material comfort in exchange for the abnegations of Freedom, I think the foregoing considerations amply prove." EDWARD STANLEY ROBERTSON

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